Stepping In Do

I’ve been stepping in a lot of do lately. I’m executing more and more. I’m looking at execution as the deciding factor in what makes one successful. Sure we can plan, but if we don’t do, we’re just thinking.

How many times in our life do we hear this: “I had that exact same idea years before ____ did it.”

Know who that person is? Not a do-er. That’s for sure. They’re a thinker, an idea person. That’s great. Ideas aren’t worth a damn until they’re moved forward into doing. (Oh, I can already see your defensive comments, but you show me someone with a head full of ideas who hasn’t done something, and I’ll show you a barrista.)

Do Or Do Not

When I launched Man on the Go, I got a lot of emails from people telling me that I’d beat them to it, and that they were planning a similar site. Great, I said. Do it. Make your version. I’m sure it’ll be awesome.

We are either doing, or we’re talking about it.

Three Phases of Doing

There are probably a gazillion ways to skin how one considers the steps of execution, but I’m going to give you a rather simplistic one that Julien Smith and I talked about the other day, in preparation for the new book we’re writing together. In our model, we think there are three stages to doing:

Experimenting – which is often done in private.

Executing – which is the doing part.

Extending – building a community around the effort.

Companies do this. They have R&D departments. They then bring a product to market. If the product takes off, a community of sorts forms (if they’re lucky). That last step isn’t a guarantee, but it’s a lovely thing when it happens.

When you experiment, do it privately, if that helps. I’ve helped some companies get started with blogging, but suggesting they blog way off topic, without any name brands, so that they can get the feel for what blogging really is and isn’t. That’s experimenting for them, so that they can get comfortable. We all experiment around our kitchen tables, don’t we?

When you execute, that’s how you know it works or not. I’ve talked about this in the difference between recipe and restaurant. If you’re just collecting ideas but not testing them out, all you have are recipes.

When you build community, you acknowledge the people who matter to you. You build relationships with those people who appreciate what you’re doing, and who maybe can extend out what you’re doing. Lego has a lot of community. They listen. It’s a two-way street. There are many others you can think of who benefit from a strong network. You can, too.

Doing Just FEELS Good

Maybe you have tons of ideas on how you’ll achieve escape velocity. Maybe you are stuck at work, stuck without work, just feeling crushed against the things going wrong in your day to day life. Nothing curse the feeling of being stuck like doing, even if it’s phase 1.